Here I explore the artwork that has been done in nature. This usually consists of my "hiking adventures", movie locations, or just some unique place that is a little out of the ordinary.

Tuesday, November 05, 2013

Hello November! (Black Star Canyon Halloween Postscript)

So now that the Halloween fun is over and we are heading to the brighter holidays I wanted to make a few points in closure before I move on to other things.

I was on top of Mt. Baldy about two months ago. The clouds had completely covered the area so you could not see anything below or that far away. There were probably about 30 people on the summit since it is a rather big summit. I was talking to friends, but then I heard this:

“Does Black Star Bill still live in that canyon?”

I knew exactly what this guy and his group were talking about. I didn’t say anything other than look at someone else from my group that looked at me and laughed. Of course, “Black Star Bill” has not lived in Black Star Canyon for over 13 years now. Yet, somehow his legendary name (and the image of a shotgun owning squatter in Black Star Canyon that is implied) keeps coming up in the oddest of places.

When I first blogged about Black Star Canyon years ago I explained some of what I thought was really going on there. Since that time I have received lots of e-mail about people’s experiences, stories, and such with that place. Now I have to admit, of all the e-mail I have received about things on this blog these would be the strangest. Not everyone, but some of that group are a little out there to say the least. The Coast to Coast AM and Art Bell audience that has mind altering substances running through them.

No matter how politely (or forcefully) one tries to correct misinformation on the internet there is a tendency for it not to go away. If you get enough of a crowd that believes the misinformation over facts then the misinformation will continue to linger as “truth”. Because of that, I’m afraid this region is in one of those situations that the lines between fiction and reality are always going to be blurred. That was really the point of my series.

That is not really the way I like things, but after a while of saying the same things over and over to people that won’t listen it becomes something like, “just give people what they want.”

That’s what I am afraid the History Channel has become. I‘m not much of a fan of documentaries these days since they are almost the same as “reality“ TV. From someone who has learned a lot about video editing in the past few years, I can say it is really easy to manipulate footage to say almost anything you want. CNN recently ran something that I am very well acquainted with, and boy did they really put one over on the public. In that case, it was not so much that the documentary was lying about everything, but a lack of context and putting things in perspective was seriously missing. As a result of this, it is very easy to rile people up who lack critical thinking skills.

One thing I sometimes hear and have thought about myself since I was kid is the idea, “I wish we just had a video (or pictures) of that event” so we can know what happened. As if everything from historical events, alleged miracles, car accidents, etc. could be verified this way. The idea is eyewitnesses are unreliable, but pictures and video are reliable. With Photoshop, Sony Vegas, and other editing software programs I’m not so sure about that.

On the reality side of things regarding Black Star Canyon, they have actually cleaned up the canyon a lot since I started going there. In the video I put together one can see the bus in the ditch is no longer there. It was taken out over a year ago. Some of the huge containers were taken out, the tractor is gone, and the residential property back in the canyon have been cleaned up as well. It has lost a little of its mystique because of that which is disappointing, but it is understandable why that had to be done.

On the semi-fictional side, or "reality" TV side of things, there was a SyFy Channel episode of a paranormal TV series called Haunted Highway that dealt with something called the “Shadow Men” in Black Star Canyon. One of the investigators is Jack Osbourne, son of Ozzy Osbourne. The second half of the episode dealt with Black Star.
http://www.hulu.com/#!watch/382485

Apart from the time they spent at the gate and driving around, I am not exactly sure where they were for that episode. What they were calling “Hidden Ranch” is not the one by the Indian village location. Nor would you have to hike to it the way they did. I don’t care much for these types of TV shows, but since I knew the area I thought it was fun.

On the fictional side, there was a short movie made called Orange County Hill Killers that I saw premiere last year at a local horror film festival. When I first heard about it I was excited to see how Black Star was used. The movie is good, but I realized pretty quickly they did not film it there. I will say that is only because I have developed an eye for these things. However, there were a couple of scenes in it that I knew exactly what they were referring to in the canyon so they did a good job of replicating the scenery there.

https://vimeo.com/62830544
I did get a laugh out of the following being posted on Halloween 2012 on their facebook site that afternoon:

Just don't go into to Blackstar Canyon.
Oops! Too late on my part that particular day...then again...not consciously...lol...

I’m sure there will be more fiction that comes out of that region in the years ahead. One thing I should point out is just to the east about six months ago there was a mysterious experience two college age people had “hiking” near Holy Jim Canyon. They were lost for a few days and search teams were sent in trying to find them. Mysteriously, one turned up one night and the other the next day only less than a half-mile from where their car was parked. They were on a mountainside and off trail, but they should not have been “lost”.

At the time, I was pretty sure they had some illegal substances running through them…but then again, those ancient aliens abduct and do all sorts of strange things to people.

About Me

This blog is mostly about my LOCATION HUNTS and HIKING, but other parts of my everyday life come out at times. For the common questions I usually get either go down to the "LABELS" and click the one entitled "Questions" or copy and paste the following link into your browser:
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